I also have this shot in which I combined two different exposures in photoshop but I prefer the original that was edited from a single raw in Lightroom

I agree. I've given HDR a go manually and with software but I always resort to making adjustments on one image to achieve the same thing. I feel it looks more natural most the time and it's certainly more convenient.

what kind of correction do you apply? Saturation, exposure...to the general picture or do you work on specific areas?

For the most part i make sure that there is proper contrast throughout the image and try to recover highlights and shadows with no detail. mostly, it depends on the image. I try to stay away from photoshop but sometimes the use of masks is necessary to get the most out of the image.